I get exactly what you're saying. Sad to say that stereotypes find their way often into comics- often in the form of visual shorthand, for instance, always showing an ndn character all fringed and feathered, or in the form of exaggerating one characteristic at the expense of others- as too often happens with openly religious characters.

A writer's ignorance can also show up in the things he or she gets wrong about different religions or cultures. I generally liked Marvel better when they awarded "no prizes," because they openly admitted having human failings and intelligent, sharp-eyed readers. I can also respect effort and willingness to do better, to at least try to treat characters as well-rounded individuals and respect their religion/culture/background. It's when it seems apparent to me that creators aren't even trying to show respect that I get offended. (For example, when Austen used Nightcrawler as a mouthpiece to bash Christianity.) I can forgive a writer who does not share the same religion or culture as the characters he or she writes for goofing up here and there, as long as I know he or she cares about doing right by the characters and the real life people they may represent.

As for what the indigenous arts community is up to, I'm glad you posted those links. I suppose you're also aware of Super Indian. Fun stuff, even the talking to animals bit.

Some other recommended reading that's a bit more on the thread's original topic would be The Science of the X-Men. It's got a great chapter on Nightcrawler and the possible nature of teleportation.

That's not even remotely close to even being implied by anything I said.

I can say that Marvel's free digital copies really came in handy when I was digging for time references to figure out how long Kurt had been dead. That was way easier than pulling down boxes and yanking out issues, which was what I had to do for "Utopia" through "Second Coming." Sungila knows why.

And I see your points and I realize you have your valid experiences for feeling the way you do about the things you say but... I can't help but think you're not being realistic you're still being pessimistic. Rather than say "but thankfully the industry is trying to grow and expand, keep up with the technology while keeping in print -- and their most successful books don't sell the same number but then again it's NOT the 70's --"... you say instead ... well everything you said.

Have you been paying attention to what the industry is doing now? It's trying to resurrect the bloody speculator boom that dang near killed it in the '90s. "Look at all these shiny variants, events, and new number ones!" Gimmicks will only get them so far, and judging by the sales numbers, some of them are starting to wear off. Event tie-ins are not providing the reliable sales boosts they did just three years ago. In fact, lengthy crossovers appear to be hurting some of DC's books. They need to broaden their horizons and put some real effort into trying to attract new readers. (They also need to make the books more friendly to new readers, but that's a whole other problem.) Preaching to the choir by advertising almost exclusively within the comics community the vast majority of the time often results in poaching sales from their own books, and flooding the market with "core" titles means fewer sales for the rest. Most comic buyers don't have unlimited incomes, and something has to give when one title is more attractive than another.

Wasn't that something Chuck Austen made a joke about here?! I would need some of the older people to reconfirm... It was probably in conversation with Bamfette.

Possible. I had only just discovered this place around the time he left, and I didn't join until years later.
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sungila wrote:Wahnsinn...I believe you have superhuman powers... I can't be sure what they are... but whatever you did to my brain, is not generally humanly possible. Maybe I'll thank you later - but first I have to recalibrate and see if I can walk a relatively straight line... or snap my fingers and WAKE UP! Maybe click my heels....nope...I'm still wonky...

They're people who post inflammatory things to get a rise out of others for their own entertainment. In other words, they're the jerks of the internet. A recent study positively correlated trolls with the Dark Tetrad of personality traits, with sadism leading the pack, which indicates they may well be jerks in real life as well.